matthew sleeth: world vision

Photographer Matthew Sleethtakes on the world. And gives back

as good as he gets. It’s a perfectmatch, writes Edward Colless.

Portrait by Kirstin Gollings.

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Worldvision

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First published in Australian Art Collector, Issue 41 July-September 2007

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“There is a conflict in photography – in practice and theory –between constructing and capturing the real,” reflectsMatthew Sleeth. He looks out from his panoramic studio

windows across the stark, sun burnt industrial rooftops of Melbourne’sFootscray. “But,” he carefully adds, glancing back toward several largeframed prints leaning against the wall of phantasmagoric street scenesfrom wintry Tokyo nights, “every photo is always a bit of both.”

Sleeth’s studio is up a giddying, zigzag metal staircase that hangs ina cavernous well by its fingernails off the top level of a po-mo refittedfactory; a staircase that unaccountably doesn’t connect to any of thefloors below in the building. The ascent is like climbing into the spaceshuttle while it’s waiting for lift off. You expect to look out on thehorizon. And from up there you look directly down onto an old, nowempty, building – waiting to be converted into more studios – that foryears used to house a reception centre, specialising in Croatianweddings. “I guess people were so used to this factory being emptythey never thought anyone could see them. Quite often during thenight young couples would duck out for some … privacy,” he recalls.“It almost looked staged: the parents dancing upstairs, blissfullyunaware of what their kids were doing in the alley exactly below them.”Look off to the right of that and you see the sizable headquarters forLonely Planet publications. Since they built a stylishly boho café deckfor their employees on their roof, Sleeth’s own view of the river andcity beyond is blocked.

The scene could all be an ingenious and elegant exposition of thisphotographer’s own work. The fascinating celebratory manoeuvres oflocal, street-level culture compared to an international marketingenterprise formulating street-wise guides to the world’s localities. Thechance discovery of all-too-human events right in front of you – a richdetail in a seemingly bleak or austere environment – contrastedagainst the stylish crafting, clarity and framing of a privileged view.From neighbourhood festivity to global entrepreneurship. From Tokyoto Melbourne. From pavement loitering to penthouse leisure. Andbehind it all a man gazing through the viewfinder of his window. But,of course, it’s not that simple. The real isn’t just waiting to bediscovered in a dark alley. And the perspective on the world gainedfrom a rooftop café isn’t necessarily smug, illusory or artificial. Weencounter the real world but we also manufacture our encounters. Wemay feel we’re in the thick of things only to be disappointed at howconventional, generic or staged our photographs of it turn out. Wemay try to control the situation with all the muscle of a dictatorialdirector only to be frustrated by a scene-stealing baby or anunscripted interruption from an animal.

From Scandinavia to Japan and from Ireland to Timor, MatthewSleeth’s photography has focussed on the world that he has beenfortunate enough – and determined enough – to see. But it has alsofocussed from the start on what he recognises as an aestheticargument between construction and capture. Sleeth’s graduating workin photography in the early 1990s was a portrait series of maleprostitutes working the streets, with the comments of the subjectssubsequently written over the prints on site. Throughout much of the90s he was working in 35mm black and white, using lightweight Leicacameras and snapping fast. The traditional hallmarks of documentaryrealism. “I liked the way this allowed me to be subjective,” he explains,“and, against those 80s postmodernist methods of conceptualism andmise-en-scène photography, there’d been a resurgence of humanistphotography.”

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Matthew Sleeth, Millenario Lights [Marunouchi] Tokyo, 2006. Type C print (digital), 127x152cm, edition of 7. COURTESY: JAN MANTON ART,

BRISBANE.; JOSEF LEBOVIC GALLERY, SYDNEY AND SOPHIE GANNON GALLERY, MELBOURNE.

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Sleeth’s first book, Roaring Days which came out in 1998, was both asummation of this on-the-run humanistic style and a conclusion to it. Grittyand hard, even in their more intimate, humble and sentimental moments, thephotographs radiate a commitment to realism that feels as affectionate andagitated as it is fervent in its moral appeal to an unflinching honesty. Many ofthe subjects in the book are characters whose work, however, is a type of act:circus acrobats, transvestites, hookers, a rock band on tour. Even watersideworkers on a picket line seem to strike a conventionally heroic, photogenicpose for the camera. They seem as histrionic as the guys horsing around in asnooker hall, or as self-conscious as a bride checking her dress out in amirror. The real seems to be a bit of a performance.

What was expressed as a dark suspicion in his 90s work became aneloquently cool scepticism by the time of his second and provocative book,Tour of Duty. A two-week stopover in the Timor war zone en route from Irelandbecame a six month residency with eventually over 600 rolls of film beingdispatched to a friend’s fridge in Darwin. And this was no longer 35mm blackand white film. “I wanted to slow down my process,” he says. “The black andwhite imagery seemed disposable, too quick. For both me and the viewer. SoI’d shifted over to medium format gear, and to colour. It could take severalminutes to set and get a shot.” Accordingly, Sleeth’s coverage of the military


This page: Matthew Sleeth, Views of Mount Fuji #4 [FujikyuHighland Park], 2004. Type C print (digital), 127 x 152cm, edition of 7.

Opposite page: Matthew Sleeth, Pictured #29, [Tokyo], 2005.Type C print (digital), 127x152cm, edition of 7.

COURTESY: JAN MANTON ART, BRISBANE.; JOSEF LEBOVIC GALLERY, SYDNEY

AND SOPHIE GANNON GALLERY, MELBOURNE.

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There’s an undeniably innocent airabout this momentary exchange; but

equally it’s a calculated and ritualinstance of consumerism and of a

commodity fetishism that fashions anidentity and bond of girlpower.

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A blurred figure to the right of the shot indicates how slow thisshot’s exposure must be, which implies that this woman mustbe so poignantly immobilised she is oblivious to the camera.

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activity in Timor shuns the grain and hustle associated with pressphotography. The troops in his photos play cricket on a beach, cheer atconcerts, jostle around a barbecue, arm wrestle, read magazines, pose forphotos. But this isn’t a glimpse at the human side or down-time of militaryaction. Cameras pop up everywhere: around soldiers necks, or poking infrom the side of an image of a helicopter dropping supplies. If the soldiersact like tourists at a Club Med resort, the military events seem to bechoreographed displays for media coverage, almost like a lifestylepromotion. It’s the posed nature of the military intervention that is Sleeth’sreal subject matter. Or more precisely, his subject is the cameras that bothwitness and induce events.

When, for the 2006 solo show Pictured at Monash Gallery of Art, he turnedhis camera surreptitiously onto anonymous tourists and passers by whowere taking photos or were themselves being photographed by theircompanions, Sleeth folded together the divergent strategies of witnessingand triggering an event into a captivating paradox. Two Tokyo schoolgirlsfacing off at a Starbucks counter giggle while shyly covering their mouths asthey snap each other simultaneously on their mobile phone cameras, only afew centimetres apart. What could they be photographing? Each other’sphone? Their own mirrored coyness? But this timidity seems like aperformance, induced by training a camera on their friend as much as byhaving one pointed back at them. There’s an undeniably innocent air aboutthis momentary exchange; but equally it’s a calculated and ritual instance ofconsumerism and of a commodity fetishism that fashions an identity andbond of girlpower.

Sleeth’s own sly photograph of the two of them, at a distance through awindow, exploits this disarmingly cute episode with the assurance of asteady, confident voyeurism. Ironically, however, since he is photographingtheir public performance for their own cameras, this hardly seems atrespass. Unless, that is, we insist that what their cameras see is private. Inwhich case, the same defence applies to Sleeth’s photo. And standing on abusy street with a bulky camera on a tripod, he’s hardly hiding. In anyrespect, accusing a photographer of voyeurism is like criticising their modelfor being exhibitionistic. Each of the photos in Pictured has this ambiguousstatus and vertiginous irony: Sleeth’s camera discreetly peeks around

Above: Matthew Sleeth, Century Southern Tower Hotel [Tokyo],2005. Type C print (digital), 123 x 155cm, edition of 5.

Above right: Matthew Sleeth, Kawaii Baby #15, [Tokyo], 2006. Type C print (optical), 50 x 61cm, edition of 5.

COURTESY: JAN MANTON ART, BRISBANE.; JOSEF LEBOVIC GALLERY, SYDNEY AND

SOPHIE GANNON GALLERY, MELBOURNE.

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corners, over ledges or chairs to catch candid shots of people who areconscientiously posing for a photo, and lingering in venues that seempicture perfect.

“I’m interested in found narrative,” says Sleeth, “but photographed in away where everything is so controlled that it looks staged.” Sleeth shoots inan analogue format, with very high resolution. His method over the pasttwo years has become painstaking as well as meticulous: 20 minutes to seta shot, usually in challenging circumstances, and a minute or two forexposure. Then days of digital work on the computer screen, editing colourtemperature and tone. All this to produce an image that has the rhetoricalimmediacy of a snapshot, a chance observation of an incident or a photoopportunity on the edge of vision, but presented on a monumental scaleand with transfixing clarity. In Century Southern Tower (Shinjuku) a youngwoman in a track-suit top gazes into the vast neon night beyond the glasswalls of the high rise executive bar where she waits for a companion whoseunfinished drink sits across the table. Has this other person briefly excusedthemself, or have they maybe left for good? Is she petulant over the delay,idly passing time, or holding herself together having been dumped?

All these possible stories hang in the air like the miraculous lights of thecity, which hover equally in the distance or in the foreground and acrossthe whole span of the scene, bouncing around the reflective glass, andsupernaturally shining through as well as onto the enframing architecture.A blurred figure to the right of the shot indicates how slow this shot’sexposure must be, which implies that this woman must be so poignantlyimmobilised she is oblivious to the camera. A camera – both tactfullyremote but also insistently fascinated with her – that has become theunrequited gaze of her absent companion. It’s so achingly beautiful andmagnificently engineered it’s hard to believe this is for real. Not a set up,not an act, not a ploy on her part to be in the picture. And it’s anenchantingly deceptive vision of the world: a world that disavows its ownphotogenic allure, and yet poses for us everywhere we look. �

Matthew Sleeth’s exhibition titled Mixed Tape will be up at Sophie GannonGallery, Melbourne from 7 August to 1 September 2007.

Above: Matthew Sleeth, Pictured #13, [Sydney], 2004. Type C print(digital), 127x152cm, edition of 7.

Above left: Matthew Sleeth, Kawaii Baby #16 [Tokyo], 2006. Type Cprint (optical), 50 x 61cm, edition of 5.

COURTESY: JAN MANTON ART, BRISBANE.; JOSEF LEBOVIC GALLERY, SYDNEY AND SOPHIE

GANNON GALLERY, MELBOURNE.

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matthew sleeth: world vision

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